Commands tagged find (410)

  • This is a slightly modified version of http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/4283/recursive-search-and-replace-old-with-new-string-inside-files (which did not work due to incorrect syntax) with the added option to sed inside only files named filename.ext


    1
    find . -type f -name filename.exe -exec sed -i "s/oldstring/oldstring/g" {} +;
    eddieb · 2013-05-20 19:17:10 11
  • Count your source and header file's line numbers. This ignores blank lines, C++ style comments, single line C style comments. This will not ignore blank lines with tabs or multiline C style comments.


    1
    find /usr/include/ -name '*.[c|h]pp' -o -name '*.[ch]' -print0 | xargs -0 cat | grep -v "^ *$" | grep -v "^ *//" | grep -v "^ */\*.*\*/" | wc -l
    unixmonkey44446 · 2013-06-17 08:37:37 11
  • Sorts by latest modified files by looking to current directory and all subdirectories Show Sample Output


    1
    find . -name '*pdf*' -print0 | xargs -0 ls -lt | head -20
    fuats · 2013-10-03 21:58:51 9
  • Better than: nodetool clearsnapshot


    1
    find /var/lib/cassandra/data -depth -type d -iwholename "*/snapshots/*" -mtime +30 -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf
    mrwulf · 2013-11-08 14:47:29 6
  • Useful when you want to cron a daily deletion task in order to keep files not older than one year. The command excludes .snapshot directory to prevent backup deletion. One can append -delete to this command to delete the files : find /path/to/directory -not \( -name .snapshot -prune \) -type f -mtime +365 -delete


    1
    find /path/to/directory -not \( -name .snapshot -prune \) -type f -mtime +365
    cuberri · 2013-12-11 14:51:53 21
  • Find files and calculate size with stat of result in shell


    1
    find . -name "pattern" -exec stat -c%s {} \; | awk '{total += $1} END {print total}'
    Koobiac · 2014-01-15 11:07:09 8

  • 1
    find * -regextype posix-extended -regex '.*\.(ext_1|ext_2)' -exec cp {} copy_target_directory \;
    shawn_abdushakur · 2014-02-06 15:58:32 8
  • Btrfs reports the inode numbers of files with failed checksums. Use `find` to lookup the file names of those inodes. The files may need to be deleted and replaced with backups.


    1
    dmesg | grep -Po 'csum failed ino\S* \d+' | awk '{print $4}' | sort -u | xargs -n 1 find / -inum 2> /dev/null
    Sepero · 2014-03-22 12:22:46 9
  • Finds all symbolic links in the specified directory which match the specified string pattern. I used this when upgrading from an Apple-supported version of Java 6 (1.6.0_65) to an Oracle-supported version (1.7.0_55) on Mac OS X 10.8.5 to find out which executables were pointing to /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands (Apple version) vs. /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_55.jdk/Contents/Home/bin (Oracle version). However, it appears the current JDK installation script already takes care of modifying the links. Show Sample Output


    1
    find directory -type l -lname string
    gumption · 2014-05-02 14:44:24 8
  • Find biggest files in a directory Show Sample Output


    1
    find . -printf '%.5m %10M %#9u %-9g %TY-%Tm-%Td+%Tr [%Y] %s %p\n'|sort -nrk8|head
    AskApache · 2014-12-10 23:48:20 9
  • It looks for files that contains the given word as parameter. * case insensitive * matches files containing the given word. Show Sample Output


    1
    finame(){ find . -iname "*$1*"; }
    ivanalejandro0 · 2014-12-31 22:33:08 10
  • With this version, you can list all symlinks in the current directory (no subdirectories), and have it list both the link and the target. Show Sample Output


    1
    ls -l `find ~ -maxdepth 1 -type l -print`
    skittleys · 2015-01-04 02:36:47 7
  • It will highlight non-ascii character in a file. those character can cause problem for some application parsing ascii file.


    1
    grep --color='auto' -P -n '[^\x00-\x7F]' my_file.txt
    mrvkino · 2015-03-03 15:03:42 8
  • List all open files of all processes. . find /proc/*/fd Look through the /proc file descriptors . -xtype f list only symlinks to file . -printf "%l\n" print the symlink target . grep -P '^/(?!dev|proc|sys)' ignore files from /dev /proc or /sys . sort | uniq -c | sort -n count the results . Many processes will create and immediately delete temporary files. These can the filtered out by adding: ... | grep -v " (deleted)$" | ... Show Sample Output


    1
    find /proc/*/fd -xtype f -printf "%l\n" | grep -P '^/(?!dev|proc|sys)' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n
    flatcap · 2015-08-18 17:58:21 11
  • This lists all files modified after calling some command using a temporal anchor.


    1
    touch .tardis; the command ; find . -newer .tardis; rm .tardis;
    BeniBela · 2015-10-15 19:18:54 14

  • 1
    find -L /path/to/check -type l | xargs rm
    sn0w · 2015-11-10 12:42:00 11
  • This is my favorite music player I use in my beloved Linux systems,server or desktop Enjoy :-) Show Sample Output


    1
    find /home/user/M?sica/ -type f -name "*.mp3" | shuf --head-count=20 --output=/home/user/playlist.m3u ; sort -R /home/user/playlist.m3u | mplayer -playlist -
    abaddon · 2016-06-10 03:04:40 20
  • this is good for variables if you have many script created files and if you want to know which one is the last created/changed one..


    1
    find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 stat -c '%y %n' | sort -n -k 1,1 | awk 'END{print $NF}'
    emphazer · 2018-05-14 08:47:41 159

  • 1
    find . -regextype posix-egrep -regex '.+\.(c|cpp|h)$' -not -path '*/generated/*' -not -path '*/deploy/*' -print0 | xargs -0 ls -L1d
    berceanu · 2018-06-06 07:25:06 221
  • First the find command finds all files in your current directory (.). This is piped to xargs to be able to run the next shell pipeline in parallel. The xargs -P argument specifies how many processes you want to run in parallel, you can set this higher than your core count as the duration reading is mainly IO bound. The -print0 and -0 arguments of find and xargs respectively are used to easily handle files with spaces or other special characters. A subshell is executed by xargs to have a shell pipeline for each file that is found by find. This pipeline extracts the duration and converts it to a format easily parsed by awk. ffmpeg reads the file and prints a lot of information about it, grep extracts the duration line. cut and sed cut out the time information, and tr converts the last . to a : to make it easier to split by awk. awk is a specialized programming language for use in shell scripts. Here we use it to split the time elements in 4 variables and add them up. Show Sample Output


    1
    find . -print0 | xargs -0 -P 40 -n 1 sh -c 'ffmpeg -i "$1" 2>&1 | grep "Duration:" | cut -d " " -f 4 | sed "s/.$//" | tr "." ":"' - | awk -F ':' '{ sum1+=$1; sum2+=$2; sum3+=$3; sum4+=$4 } END { printf "%.0f:%.0f:%.0f.%.0f\n", sum1, sum2, sum3, sum4 }'
    pingiun · 2019-03-01 20:21:48 40
  • Replaces a string matching a pattern in one or several files found recursively in a particular folder.


    1
    find ./ -type f -name "somefile.txt" -exec sed -i -e 's/foo/bar/g' {} \;
    guillaume1306 · 2019-03-06 10:13:23 41
  • Although the need to type a password to make certain changes to the system may make perfect sense in a business or educational environment, it makes absolutely zero sense to the home user. So, if you’re at home and would rather get work done than be annoyed by what is essentially Linux’s UAC, then this command is for you.


    1
    sudo find /usr/share/polkit-1 -iname “*.policy” -exec sed -i “s/\(auth_admin\|auth_admin_keep\)/yes/g” {} \;
    realkstrawn93 · 2022-03-28 03:00:09 392
  • This example summarize size of all pdf files in /tmp directory and its subdirectories (in bytes). Replace "/tmp" with directory path of your choice and "\*pdf" or even "-iname \*pdf" with your own pattern to match specific type of files. You can replace also parameter for du to count kilo or megabytes, but because of du rounding the sum will not be correct (especially with lot of small files and megabytes counting). In some cases you could probably use sth like this: du -cb `find /tmp -type f -iname \*pdf`|tail -n 1 But be aware that this second command CANNOT count files with spaces in their names and it will cheat you, if there are some files matching the pattern that you don't have rights to read. The first oneliner is resistant to such problems (it will not count sizes of files which you cant read but will give you correct sum of rest of them). Show Sample Output


    0
    SUM=0; for FILESIZE in `find /tmp -type f -iname \*pdf -exec du -b {} \; 2>/dev/null | cut -f1` ; do (( SUM += $FILESIZE )) ; done ; echo "sum=$SUM"
    alcik · 2009-03-05 17:16:52 8

  • 0
    find /home/fizz -type f -printf '%TY-%Tm-%Td %TT %p\n' | sort
    fizz · 2009-05-20 10:45:39 6

  • 0
    find /var/logs -name * | xargs tar -jcpf logs_`date +%Y-%m-%e`.tar.bz2
    unixmonkey4063 · 2009-06-02 19:48:47 6
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Generate random valid mac addresses
First set the variable $hexchars: $hexchars="0123456789ABCDEF" Change the number in the first for loop if you need less then 1200 mac addresses

A DESTRUCTIVE command to render a drive unbootable
Overwrites the boot sector. Since this doesn't overwrite any data, you can usually recover by re-creating the partition table exactly the same as before you zeroed it. This can also help sometimes if you install a new drive in a Windows machine which can't read it.

edit, view or execute last modified file with a single key-press
Copy this function to command line, press 'Enter' 'f'' 'Enter' to execute (sentence on the left written only for newbies). Hint 'e|x|v|1..9' in front of displayed last modified file name means: "Press 'e' for edit,'x' for execute,'v' for view or a digit-key '1..9' to touch one file from the recent files list to be last modified" and suggested (hidden files are listed too, else remove 'a' from 'ls -tarp' statement if not intended). If you find this function useful you can then rename it if needed and append or include into your ~/.bashrc config script. With the command $ . ~/.bashrc the function then can be made immediately available. In the body of the function modifications can be made, i.e. replaced joe editor command or added new option into case statement, for example 'o) exo-open $h;;' command for opening file with default application - or something else (here could not be added since the function would exceed 255 chars). To cancel execution of function started is no need to press Ctrl-C - if the mind changed and want to leave simple Enter-press is enough. Once defined, this function can with $ typeset -f f command be displayed in easy readable form

Downmix from stereo to mono and play radio stream with mplayer
The solution to a year long (and extremely frustrating) problem I've had, caused by the fact that I only have one speaker; this command downmixes the stream to monophonic output, making sure I don't miss any of the music. NOTE: When stream is in .m3u format, a -playlist option is required, as shown below: $ mplayer -af pan=1:0.5:0.5 -channels 1 -playlist radiostream.m3u This command works great with aliases for various channels in .bashrc. Sample below: $ alias radio1='mplayer -af pan=1:0.5:0.5 -channels 1 radio1stream.pls'

simple du command to give size of next level of subfolder in MB
If you're only using -m or -k, you will need to remember they are either in Megabyte or kilobyte forms. So by using -B, it gives you the unit of the size measurement, which helps you from reading the result faster. You can try with -B K as well.

Recall “N”th command from your BASH history without executing it.

a find and replace within text-based files, to locate and rewrite text en mass.
syntax follows regular command line expression. example: let's say you have a directory (with subdirs) that has say 4000 .php files. All of these files were made via script, but uh-oh, there was a typo! if the typo is "let's go jome!" but you meant it to say "let's go home!" find . -name "*.php" | xargs perl -pi -e "s/let\'s\ go\ jome\!/let\'s\ go\ home\!/g" all better :) multiline: find . -name "*.php" | xargs perl -p0777i -e 's/knownline1\nknownline2/replaced/m' indescriminate line replace: find ./ -name '*.php' | xargs perl -pi -e 's/\".*$\"/\new\ line\ content/g'

Gets the english pronunciation of a phrase
Sends a string to google tranlator, which converts it to English speech. It's possible to create a nice script to do the job for us, such as #!/bin'bash curl -A "Mozilla" "http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?tl=en&q=$1" > /tmp/speak.mp3 mplayer /tmp/speak.mp3

cd to (or operate on) a file across parallel directories
This is useful for quickly jumping around branches in a file system, or operating on a parellel file. This is tested in bash. cd to (substitute in PWD, a for b) where PWD is the bash environmental variable for the "working directory"

Edit all files found having a specific string found by grep
The grep switches eliminate the need for awk and sed. Modifying vim with -p will show all files in separate tabs, -o in separate vim windows. Just wish it didn't hose my terminal once I exit vim!!


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